All a Dream
by Mrs. Abject
Summary: Eri can't shake the feeling that she really did lose her. Shiki's just glad to see her again. Twoshot, spoilers for week 1, Eri/Shiki.
1. Eri Dreams

**All a Dream  
**

Rating: K+.  
Warnings: Spoilers for Week 1, shameless angst, shameless fluff, shipping of the Eri/Shiki persuasion. Again, Eri doesn't show up much in-game, so I might be writing her a bit OOC.  
Disclaimer: I don't own The World Ends With You.  
A/N: I started out wanting to write about someone not involved in the game sort of knowing that these people had been dead but not really still having it as fact. Next thing you know, it's obscenely late at night, to the point that normal people would consider it "early", the homework's not done, and the fanfic has turned into pointless Eri/Shiki angstfluff. I'm actually pretty happy with how it turned out, though, even though I probably need some work on writing fluff. Reviews please? I've planned out another chapter, so I'm guessing this will be a twoshot. (15/02/2009: Edited so it makes more sense, and so an awkward conversation was more obviously so. It bugged me.

* * *

"I had a dream you died, Shiki," Eri tells her, head lowered so nobody can see the circles under her eyes, voice whispering in Shiki's ear so nobody can hear how shaky it is. It's a great disguise, really—if anyone were to walk by, they'd probably just see Eri telling her friend a secret, nothing anyone would think strange. After all, she doesn't have a reason to be upset, not at all, and she knows she won't be able to come up with an answer that makes any sense if anybody asks her what's wrong. She's got her Shiki back… no, that wasn't it. Shiki never really went away in the first place, and maybe it _was_ one of those vivid sorts of dreams where she'd woken up sobbing because she'd expected it to still be true, but Shiki's alive again. No. Shiki didn't die at all. It was all just a dream, nothing to it but Eri's guilt and… everything else around and between the two of them piling up and warping until her mind got overwhelmed and killed off Shiki while Eri slept. _Eri, there's no easy way to say this, but it's better you know..._ (and why was her mother crying?)_ Shiki's... there was an... accident at her house, after you came home, she... I'm so sorry, honey..._

"It's okay," Shiki replies. "It was just a... I'm okay, don't worry about it." There's something about Shiki that isn't shocked, that doesn't see this as anything new, and maybe it's no big deal that Eri had a nightmare, but there's usually a reaction. Her eyes get wider, or she gets flustered, or sometimes she breathes a little faster. They've known each other since they were kids, and Eri can tell when Shiki's heard it before.

Nevermind, there's something about Shiki that's just... different. It confuses Eri, but that's okay, because a lot of things about her confuse Eri (the trick is to act like you know what you're doing, to remember to smile all the way through it), and she's got her happy ending, right? They'd gotten their I-forgive-yous out of the way, and even though Eri still doesn't really know what Shiki had to apologize for, she gets it that Shiki needed the chance to apologize. There wasn't any harm in letting her, and there's no need to speculate about it now. It's not like the dream anymore, like something horrible that just couldn't be but still _was_—no, Shiki's here, and there are still clothes to be designed and shopping trips to be taken and secrets to be shared. Eri had found them a different bench than usual, out of the way so nobody would see perky, bubbly Eri on the verge of tears, if it gets that far. Which maybe it won't, because she can't tell whether they'd be happy tears or sad tears, anyway. The sky had been overcast all day, but there probably won't be any rain, and even if there is, they'll have Eri's pink plaid umbrella.

"There was a funeral and everything," Eri continues, even though she probably should stop. There's nothing to be sad about anymore. It was all just a dream, like those stories where things get _so_ bad there's no way for the hero to win, and then surprise! They wake up, and everything's nice again, or at least back to the way it started out. Eri's not the type to think for hours about people in stories, but now she's wondering if those people had a hard time getting back to just fine all the way from awful, getting back to being happy when it still _feels_ like Shiki had died three weeks ago (or was it two?). It all still feels real, and yes, Eri never got to see the body, there's room for a thousand conspiracy theories, but she'd been told there was a good reason the casket was closed. "They asked me to pick out your dress…" and of course nobody saw the dress anyway, but Eri's not going into any details like that.

"One of your designs?" Shiki asks. It sounds like she's trying to make a joke, but Eri knows Shiki better than anybody, and this isn't the way her voice sounds when she thinks something's funny.

It had been a white dress. Natural Puppy, if Eri remembers it right. She wanted it to be one of Shiki's designs-- maybe it would somehow mean that Eri really had respected Shiki as a designer all along, even if Eri couldn't say what exactly that would do-- but Shiki hadn't finished it, hadn't gotten any farther than cutting out the fabric, and Eri just knew she could never sew well enough to make the dress her Shiki would be buried in, couldn't make the clothes real like Shiki did even if nobody would see, even if the casket would be closed and it was better that way.

She'd wanted to see Shiki, and they told her that the girl in there wasn't really Shiki anymore, and they'd cleaned her up as best as possible, but that wasn't how Eri would want to remember her. They told her that Mr. Mew (although they hadn't called him that, it had been "her cat", or "that thing") was in there with her, to keep her company so she wouldn't be lonely or sad anymore. _They're talking to me like I'm a little kid!_ she'd thought, but they'd known something she hadn't. Shiki hadn't been lonely. How dare they tell Shiki's Eri, the one that had been with her since forever and had stayed by her side through _everything_, that Shiki had been _lonely_! If she'd been sad and lonely enough for somebody to notice that hadn't even ever met her... and how did these people know how she felt? Why did they care? All they knew about her was how she died... and Eri stopped before she really proved it to herself, because she'd figured it out enough, but there wasn't any proof. Shiki could have just been distracted, not paying attention-- when she wasn't sewing, it was always easy to catch her attention, and after all, Eri knew Shiki so much better than these people did. She'd even wondered if they knew what was going on at all, looked under couch cushions and in the backs of closets for Mr. Mew. She'd keep him for herself, hold him when she slept at night. He'd been there since the beginning, and Eri _needed _something of Shiki's to keep with her almost as much as she needed Shiki back, but she couldn't find him anywhere. Those people at the funeral home had been right, but no, it was an accident, just like everybody said. Shiki would never have done _that_, and Eri had told herself it was a dream, tried to wake herself up, but of course she didn't wake up. Not then.

She'd asked to see Shiki, and it wasn't as if they'd given her a straight answer, but she could make a pretty good guess that Shiki didn't look like Shiki anymore.

But the Shiki here is still recognizable. Pretty, even. The Shiki here is alive and well, and Eri's never going to take her for granted ever again. Just seeing her again for real, even after her mother had patiently reassured her that yes, it was all a dream, no, nothing had happened to Shiki (no more _Mrs. Misaki said the doctors did all they could_), just _seeing_ her again made Eri happier than she thought anything could. Throwing her arms around Shiki again—yes, she's real, she's solid—while Shiki asked what was wrong, was she okay, but had hugged her back anyway just as hard, and there was Mr. Mew again, his head and one floppy arm sticking out of Shiki's bookbag, above ground (where else could he possibly be?)

It doesn't make sense for her to be upset, and she doesn't even know it's gotten this bad until her eyes hurt and everything's blurry and Shiki's looking at her, alarmed.

"Eri?" and she's full-out crying again (again? None of this had really happened, and she needed to remember that), sobbing because it was all so messed up, Shiki dead and then Shiki changed, and everything back to normal but herself, and she doesn't know what she'd do without her, doesn't know what she'd do if it happened for real. Shiki's never going to know how much it hurt her..."Please, don't cry, I..."

Shiki hesitates, although for what, Eri can't tell, but then there's Shiki's arm around her side, pulling her closer, Eri's head on Shiki's shoulder and their fingers laced together like stitches. "I mean, you'd miss me if I wasn't here, right? It's kind of nice to know that..."

No, this is _not _the usual Shiki. It's always been Eri who hugs her or hold her hand or plays with her hair or-- and anyway, it's always been Shiki that trembles in Eri's arms. (Lately, she'd been shying away altogether, and Eri doesn't want to think about what that means any more than the way people in her dream tended to pause before the word "accident".) Shiki pulling her in? Shiki holding her? It's _definitely_ a change... but it's not bad. Eri closes her eyes, leans into her friend. Shiki's hair tickles her forehead, but she's there, she's tangible, and it feels sort of nice. Her chest rises and falls, rises and falls. Shiki's breathing a little faster, and Eri can read her well enough to know this is something new.

"You have no idea how scared I was," Eri tells her.

"Wait, I didn't mean I wanted you to feel bad!" Shiki says, and there's that awkward, skittish,_ cute _little face she makes when she thinks she's said something the wrong way. Not everything's different, apparently, and she starts giggling in spite of herself. "I'm sorry!"

"'S okay," Eri says, smiling now. "It's not your fault I had a weird dream, silly." This won't drag her down. She's with Shiki, and they've got the rest of the day ahead of them. 104 was only a couple blocks walking distance and a subway ride away. That always cheered Eri up. Hachiko was there, too, and seeing him always cheered Shiki up. _Forget it, Eri. It was just a dream. Just a dream! _But still... "Shiki?"

"Huh?"

"Don't die on me for real, okay?" For a second, Shiki says nothing, doesn't seem to know what to say, and then she squeezes Eri's hand, held her a little tighter.

"I'll try not to," she says, more quietly. Eri's stopped crying, but something wet falls on her cheek (Shiki couldn't be crying now, could she?). Another drop lands on her knee, and _of course_, it's started to rain, just like she'd been sure wouldn't happen.

"Dammit!" she mutters. Her bag's somewhere under the bench, and without her umbrella, they'll be stuck out in the rain, but man, she doesn't want to move-- it's not exactly cold out, but Shiki's warm, and Eri hasn't been cuddled up with her like this for what feels like weeks. Still, there's no way she'd let either of them show up to the most fashionable store in all Shibuya looking like a drowned rat. She detaches herself (maybe it was colder out than she'd thought), and starts fishing underneath the bench. It's really uncomfortable to reach for her bag without getting off the bench (it really had been better just a couple seconds ago, and if that sigh was any indication, Shiki thought so, too), but she's almost got the handle, she just needs to reach a little more, and they'll be dry.

"Hey, let me..." There's a whoosh, and Shiki's umbrella opens, light blue with white polka dots. Eri pulls herself back up, nestling back into Shiki. The umbrella covers the both of them easily, and when Shiki tugs her bag underneath the umbrella to keep it from getting soaked, Mr. Mew's head and arm fall across her lap. Eri's bag is going to get positively soaked, and Mr. Mew looks completely ridiculous, half out of the bag, half in, like he's trying to escape. Still, it's just the three of them, Eri, Shiki, and Mr. Mew, like it had been from the start (as soon as Eri's thought it, she realizes how cheesy it sounds) and it doesn't matter how strangely realistic her dream had seemed, it doesn't matter that there had to be something more to what happened than waking up with everything _fixed_. It matters that she could, just barely, hear Shiki's heart beating over the sound of the rain hitting the blue umbrella, and it matters that Shiki's heart is beating a little faster than usual, and Eri's is, too. It doesn't matter how much of last night had been real. Shiki's alive right now. Everything's okay, and Eri's perfectly happy to let herself be confused if so far, being confused has left her underneath Shiki's umbrella.

"Now that you've agreed not to die on me, let's go to 104!" because she needs to break the silence somehow, and because there's the chance to be happy again, now that nothing's really wrong. She wonders if she sounds a little too happy, if the suggestion is a little forced, if Shiki hears the nervousness in the way she's making whatever this _thing_ was into almost a joke. But Eri doesn't know how to deal with it other than by being Eri, and she does it to the best of her ability.

"Sure... maybe a little later?"

"Yeah," Eri says, nodding into her friend's cardigan. She knows they'll want to get out of the rain soon, but for now, she's too comfortable to get up and head for the subway. "I think they've finally got the new D+B line in. Have you seen the pictures online?" Shiki has, and soon they're chattering about blouses and miniskirts and whether the new hats would go with the shoes they bought last week-- last week, not three (two?) weeks ago. _Yeah_, thinks Eri, smiling and giggling, and seeing her Shiki smile. _It's really okay._


	2. Shiki Remembers

**All a Dream  
**

Rating: K+.  
Warnings: Spoilers for Week 1, slight spoilers for week 2 and very very vague stuff for week 3, Eri/Shiki, Shiki/Eri, too much description of what characters are wearing, certain implications about Shiki's death, enough fluff to make my beta's head explode.  
Disclaimer: I don't own The World Ends With You, the characters and settings therein, and blah, blah, blah.  
A/N: Sorry this chapter took so long to get written and stuff- I really don't have an excuse. I think it turned out okay, better than the first one, at least (although whether that's actually okay? Hopefully!) Thanks for the favs, reviews, etc. on the first chapter. Feedback on this one would be lovely as well.

* * *

104 is warm inside, and dry, too. Shiki huddles close to Eri as she puts the umbrella away. The stores are full of people, some who look like they're there to shop and some who probably just wanted to get out of the rain. Their wet shoes squeak, and the upbeat, poppy music almost covers up the sound-- but not quite. It's crowded, but hey, it's been worse. They've braved blowout sales and brand debuts, when it seemed like everyone in Shibuya was trying their best to pack themselves into one very fashionable building. To Shiki and Eri, shopping experts, a little rainy day was nothing.

The lights are as bright as always, and the store smells like new clothes and teen perfume just like every other time they've been here, but it's still a cold, wet day, terrible for going anywhere. A day where it makes sense to go inside a store if you're already there, yeah, maybe to buy something if you've got the money and you see something you like, but it doesn't make sense to go all the way downtown if you could just wait until tomorrow to put the trip off, especially not if you have to walk to the subway in the rain and walk to wherever you're going in the rain, and then back to the subway and back home to wherever you came from once you're finished. It's not like all the new clothes are going to be bought up before tomorrow, or a timer on their hands was counting off the seconds they had to get to the store before something horrible happened...

"Good to see you two again," says the clerk, giving a little wave, and Shiki reminds herself that "you two" is back to meaning her and Eri. "Let's take your bags?" she asks, almost apologetically, but the girls have been there enough so that they're one step ahead of her, already handing her their bags over the counter.

They're trying to get back some semblance of normalcy, and Shiki knows it. Eri's actually having to _try_ to be Eri (Shiki could say that she knows what that's like). The spontaneity isn't coming naturally, and Shiki suspects that Eri wouldn't be acting so happy if she wasn't making herself get over this whole "death" thing by sheer force of will. It's not like they're shopping because they feel like it and they can, they're shopping because that's what they usually do, and maybe if they do things like usual, it won't matter so much that their lives had gone so horribly off-course. It's weird how intentional today has to be, Shiki trying so hard to be stronger, Eri trying to forget about the things that, technically, never happened now.

Shiki doesn't mind having to try. They're a team again, and that's what counts. She finds herself walking in step with the synthesized beat.

"Ooh, look at that one!" Eri calls out, motioning towards a bright yellow top. She's off to collect it, grabbing up a pair of pinstriped pants along the way. Shiki's over at another rack, picking up a pale green halter dress. She's seen it there before, thought it was pretty, just the sort of thing she would want to wear if _she_ was pretty. If she could pull it off. She can't remember what it felt like to be so scared of an outfit. She can't remember _why_, and realizes that she has very little sympathy for the old Shiki. It's just a dress. If she doesn't look good in it, she can hang it up again and go back for something else.

Still, she feels the familiar tension in her chest, making her wonder whether it's _really _worth it to try.

For a moment, Eri's smile seems forced, like she's trying to hold on to normal, and Shiki wants to fix it, wants to make Eri smile for real... but normal is what Shiki's fought her way back for, what pushed her to keep going as things got progressively stranger, as they started making less and less sense. She doesn't want to think about what could have happened to herself, to everyone, or what exactly was going on that entire time, or what have you. Not now. She's glad to have met him, no, them, partly because it's helped her see what she's had all along and partly because she just likes them, but she's glad they agreed to give it all a week to take. She definitely doesn't want to think about whether "They made you my entry fee" means "I love you."

(_Coming from a normal person, it probably would,_ she's decided, but this is Neku, and she has no idea what _he'd_ mean. It's not really "I love you"-- that much is obvious-- as much as "I'm in love with you" that she's worried about, but people tended to say one to mean the other, and she's not sure he'll be able to know the difference right away.)

Shiki flips through the row of dresses until she finds one in a size small, and (still more cautiously than she'd like to) takes it off the rack. Eri's whirling across the store, picking up shirts and skirts and everything she can see, almost dancing to the music. It was a different song, now, but still the kind of song that made you feel happy and energized. 104 fare didn't have that much variety. They'd played the song before, almost three weeks ago that wasn't really almost three weeks ago, but a today that didn't happen. She doesn't want to think about it, but she was leaning against the mirror in the dressing room (careful not to look), looking at her phone, when the song came on, and before she knew it her eyes had felt hot and wet, and then there she was, crying like a little girl in her tank top and miniskirt (clothes Eri, not Shiki, would have picked.) Eri had used that song for her ringtone back when it had just come out.

Eri changes directions as she goes to look for accessories, her reddish hair spinning around her shoulders underneath the hat, catching the lights in the store in just the right way. Eri seems to have a talent for that, too, and Shiki sees that her friend has already drawn in several stares. For a moment, she's struck with the urge to go dance with Eri in the aisles, to move with the song and twirl around like pinwheels through the store, but she stops herself. She's not graceful like Eri-- _but it's okay_, she reminds herself, catching the doubt in time. _Eri'_s like Eri, and looking at the way she flutters around when she's happy like that (even if it's intentional happiness, even if she's just doing it on purpose so she doesn't think about how bad it almost got) gives Shiki the same shortness of breath as when she'd seen Eri earlier that day, for the first time since she'd... died, that was the best way to put it, forget about the details, before she'd seen the shadows under Eri's eyes or the way Eri seemed to miss her just as much. _She shouldn't know about it! _but somehow she does, even if she doesn't remember it enough to know it was true. _Eri... I'm so sorry..._

"Shiki!" Eri calls out, stopping in her tracks. Shiki knows that look in her eyes-- last time Eri got that way, Shiki had ended up in an impossibly frilly pink Lapin Angelique number (Eri had tried on the matching white one. It's a popular style, Eri said, and they needed to know how to fit it into their designs, if they wanted to appeal to more people. Shiki was more preoccupied with learning how to balance herself underneath all of the bows and ruffles and layers of skirt.) "That dress! You have to try it on, Shiki, you have to!"

"Do you think it'll look good?" Shiki asked.

"Of course, Shiki, just _try it on!_"

It was her idea first. _But that didn't matter anymore_, Shiki told herself, and surprisingly, it _didn't._ She wasn't about to tell herself it was over. No, she knew herself too well for that. But for this time, it didn't matter whose idea was whose, or if Shiki was the one to get the credit, or who'd be noticed. She was shopping with Eri, and Eri thought the dress she picked was pretty, and a song had just come on the store's radio that was one of her personal favorites. A little slower, a little quieter than some of the songs here, but that didn't mean it was any worse than the quicker, perkier ones.

Eri counts out loud the number of things in the pile of clothes she's holding, then gets a tag for seven items for herself, and a tag for one item for Shiki before she grabs onto the sleeve of Shiki's cardigan and pulls her in the direction of the dressing rooms.

"You_ have_ to show me when it's done, okay?" Eri practically squeals.

"You too!" says Shiki, partially because it's still a little strange for her to talk about herself, but also because Eri's clothes really are cute. It's the kind of thing she used to see in flashes, in between the moments of _Eri's prettier than me_, or _Eri dresses better than me_, or _Why does everyone like Eri better? _She's seeing Eri as she really is, the sweet, kind, enthusiastic, slightly ditzy Eri that must have been there all along, as if the way she'd thought of Eri reflected the real girl through some sort of funhouse mirror, or blurred her, as if Shiki had her glasses off. Shiki could see it now. It was like he had said: she was lucky. She was so incredibly lucky.

"Fine, but you have to! You really _have_ to!" she says, and then she picks a dressing room, props her pile of clothes up on the wall with her hip while she opens up the door, then scoops them all back up and goes inside. She leaves the door open for a second, a look on her face like she's trying to figure something out, and Shiki's breath catches-- was Eri asking her to share? They always used to try on clothes in the same dressing room when they were younger, an unspoken agreement between the two that Eri wouldn't say anything about how skinny Shiki was as long as Shiki didn't mention that Eri was the first in their year to fill out her bra.

It's _different_ now, though, and Shiki looks away and heads into the dressing room across the hall. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Eri shrug, and the she hears the door close and the latch click and Eri start unzipping something.

Really, Shiki had _wanted_ to share, and that's why she's over here, with the mirror and clothing hooks and the little bench all to herself, because she knows what that means, and it's unmistakable, really, now that she can see Eri for who she really is, but it's probably not obvious to Eri-- even though _something's_ different, that's for sure. And if it was obvious to Eri, too... well, today, they were shopping. Today it was good enough to buy clothes, and ride the bus, and listen to the splashing noises their shoes made in the rain, and to share an umbrella... She's blushing, a little, but she remembers the dress, and that she's here to try on clothes, not to think that sort of thing... Eri's here, now. Neither of them are going anywhere.

Cardigan unbuttoned, shirt up, skirt down, and Shiki tries not to look in the mirror at the way her hipbones stick out and her ribs show and she doesn't have much of a chest, but she sees her reflection anyway, and it's mostly not as bad as she remembers it. At least the reflection is her own. There's nothing so bad about herself that she had to go and... do what she did. (She can't remember what she thought Eri would feel. She doesn't want to, because part of her worries she thought Eri would deserve it, or everyone would be sorry they let Eri overshadow her and it didn't matter what _Eri _thought, it was her fault anyway... or maybe it just hurt too much, maybe she hadn't been thinking about what Eri felt at all.) But she's not here to think about _that_ sort of thing, either, and she slips the dress on over her shoulders, and ties the ribbons around her neck and waist, and unscrunches her eyes before she looks in the mirror.

She's pretty. The dress softens her up a little, leaves curves where Shiki couldn't see any before. It would probably look better on Eri... but Shiki reminds herself that it looks good on _her_ as it is. She twirls around experimentally, watches the skirt spin. It's exactly what she was looking for.

"You done already?" Eri asks when Shiki opens up the changing room door (she must have heard the click, Shiki supposes).

"Yeah, do you wanna see?" Shiki says, gathering up as much confidence as she can. It's a pretty dress, and she knows it, but still, she's nervous, somehow. For the life of her, she can't figure out why, and then Eri's door clicks, too, and Eri comes out in the pinstriped pants and a white lacy top that Shiki hadn't seen before.

"Wow, that's..." Eri pauses, and for a second Shiki's afraid that it's a bad pause, but something tells her it isn't. "That's amazing! I mean, I never would have even noticed something like that, but on you, it's so..." Eri trails off again, and Shiki knows she's probably imagining it, but... "Shoes!" she cuts in, breaking the silence. "We need to find you some shoes to go with that! You can't wear a dress like that with those sneakers, Shiki!" Shiki knows she's got a cute pair of strappy sandals back at home that would match it perfectly, but she forgets about her sandals, forgets about why Eri's changing the subject, because she's over at the shoe rack with Eri, going through the boots and Mary-Janes, and talking and laughing and just being a team again.

In the end, Shiki doesn't buy any shoes, just the dress, and Eri makes several purchases, although not everything that she eventually went back and tried on. They get their bags back from the clerk, who tells them to have a great day, but they're ahead of her again with this request, too. The rain hasn't stopped, but it's gotten lighter, and they barely need an umbrella on the way back to the subway, but they take one out (Eri's pink one this time) anyway. They pass Hachiko, and Shiki smiles at seeing him-- he always did make her happy, waiting there. Then they get on the subway, and get off the subway a few stops later, and walk a couple blocks to the place where Eri turns left to walk to her house and Shiki turns right to take the bus to her apartment.

"I had a great time with you today!" says Eri.

"Me too," Shiki replies. She doesn't want the day to be over, wants to stay with Eri, but hey, with the way Eri makes her feel, it's best to learn to take what she can get. "I can't believe I found that dress!"

"We still need to come back and find you some shoes, you know," and then Eri's voice is more serious, less lighthearted. "I'm... I'm really glad you're okay."

"Don't worry about me, okay?" Shiki says, but Eri is Eri, of _course_ she's going to worry, and it wasn't fair what she did. She thought it would be over, she thought Eri wouldn't have to be sad once she came back, wouldn't have to have been sad, but it's not completely gone. She couldn't take it away, and it isn't fair. She's sorry, but sorry only goes so far when you're pretending it never happened.

"See you later, Shiki," Eri says, smiling, and then gives Shiki a quick one-armed hug, which she's used to when they're carrying shopping bags, and turns to go home, but Eri's still hurt and it's not fair.

"Bye, Eri," Shiki mumbles.

_It's not fair at all_. She can't leave it like this.

"Wait!" she calls out, reaching out for Eri's wrist, and she misses, but Eri turns around and comes back to her, and then she can't really tell how it happens, but she's in Eri's arms, and Eri's in hers, too, and then it's unmistakable, really. It's obvious to Shiki, and it's obvious that it's obvious to Eri, and the way Eri always used to hold her hand and hug her and play with her hair and draw out clothes for her to wear... it makes sense, now, and the way that Shiki stuck around to sew Eri's designs all that time... she doesn't know it, but that makes sense, now, too, and Shiki's holding Eri to her tightly, and it's different now, _closer_ now, but they're a team again, and Shiki finally understands what that's always meant.

She's heard people talk about dying of happiness, and the expression floats through her mind, the part of her mind that tells her she's not good enough, reminds her of what she did, and she answers it, perfectly rationally, that no, she can't die again, because she knows what her entry fee would be this time.

"Eri," she says, almost at a whisper, now, but this is what she has to do, if she really means it, if they're really a team, "I had a dream I died, too."


End file.
